A Somewhat Irregular Ad

While I was watching TV today, I took note of a particular commercial.  It starts out with a slim young woman walking around on a plain background.  She is attractive with long blond hair and is wearing a white crop top and a short white skirt.  I wasn't really paying that much attention--just another add for a feminine hygiene product was my guess--until I realized that the ad was for Benefiber.  

Benefiber?  Huh?  Let me get this straight, the whole message of this smiling young woman dancing around on my screen is "I am young, I am pretty, I am fashionable and I am slightly irregular"?  

What is even stranger is that I went on-line to see if I could find the ad so that I could watch it again before I wrote this post.  (I am all about doing the research and getting the facts.)  I couldn't find the crop top/short skirt commercial, but I did find about ten links to another Benefiber ad.  This one features another slim, young, blond woman.  However, she is wearing white pants and--wait for it--a bright green feathered crop top.  Seriously.  It looks like she is being attacked by a muppet.  There is some French music (or at least some woman speaking French) in the background, and our young mademoiselle is cavorting around with a glass of water.  Apparently the main benefit of Benefiber is that when added to water it is clear, not cloudy, like the competitor's brand.  So, does that mean that the message here is "I am young, I am French, I like clear things and I am slightly irregular"?

I understand that the whole point of advertising is to romance a product.  Apparently Benefiber is trying to win over a newer, hipper--though still slightly irregular--audience.  It seems a bit of a stretch.  Funnily enough, a woman who used to live in my building was the "star" of a Metameusil ad.  While she was young (though not barely legal like blond girl), she was not as hip and fashionable in her commercial.  In her ad she was shown struggling to pull a shopping cart filled with broccoli to illustrate the amount of vegetables that one would need to eat to get the same amount of fiber in the (presumably cloudy) Metameusil.  She no longer lives in the building, but she seemed nice when I chatted with her in the elevator.  She had a super cute dog, too.

In an odd twist, she is now "starring" in ad for a fiber pill.  I am not sure if it is made by Metameusil or not.  If not, I wonder if the maker of the fiber pill thought "Wow, she really brought the laxative drink ad to life!  Let's get her to shill our fiber pill!"  I am not an actress, but if I were, I don't think that I would like to be pigeonholed as "The Face of Constipation".  The only thing worse would be becoming known as the "Diva of Incontinence".